


At the Mercy of the Resistance

by AbstractionDesolation



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Emotional Abuse, Eventual Comfort, F/F, Hurt, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I haven’t seen the last movie, Lots of Hurt, M/M, Not Beta Read, We Die Like Men, did I say hurt yet, not movie compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:35:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 17
Words: 6,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24873919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AbstractionDesolation/pseuds/AbstractionDesolation
Summary: Kylo and Hux have been captured by the resistance. They have no idea what to expect, but they would never guess what is going to happen. Torn apart they both suffer at the hands of the so-called “good guys.”
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren, background Rey/Rose, background stormpilot - Relationship
Comments: 14
Kudos: 33





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is not canon compliant. I haven’t seen the last movie at all. There is some violence and I tagged it but it’s not horrible until you throw in the emotional abuse these boys go through. I tagged that too. The story is completed as much as I can make it without a beta and I will post more chapters if there is interest. For now, please don’t hate me. Anything in | | means it’s something the character is thinking.

“Kylo Ren is dead.” The guard’s words hissed out of his grinning face as he watched for Hux to break. “Dead and gone and even his mother knows it.”

Hux didn’t blink. Didn’t make a sound. The guard continued to taunt him as he stood shackled to the wall at wrists, neck and ankles. His great coat was long gone, his black tank top dirty and crusted with dried blood. He was still tall, still wiry and lithely muscled but he was half the size of the taunting man pacing before him and chained as he was he knew he’d never be able to bash the wide white smile off the mans face, to stop the |lies| from his lips. 

“Ren is dead. And you’re a captive and there is nothing left for you in this world but to give up your secrets and pray for mercy.”

Hux knew there would be no mercy. Whether he told all he knew, gave them more false leads, or stubbornly held his tongue he knew he had a death sentence hanging over his head. Not just for all he had done with the first order but also for what he had done to Kylo - the son of the resistance general. He knew she’d never forgive the way he had become involved with her son, regardless of whether or not they cared for each other. He faced his captor and held himself as upright and strong as he could, not letting the agony of Kylo’s demise show in any way even as his insides shredded and his mind screamed his fury and loss. 

The blows were nothing. His lip split against his teeth. His tongue bled from being bitten and ribs cracked but he never made a sound. And all the while the guard taunted, sometimes about the loss of the Order but always, always circling back to Kylo being dead. 

By the time a blow knocked him out Hux was a standing shell, not feeling a thing in his physical body but dying inside anyway.


	2. Kylo

From another cell, another planet perhaps, Kylo watched with gritted teeth and bubbling rage. He saw the guard, heard him say the words, saw Hux’s infinitesimally small tension that even the other man never noticed and no interrogator ever could. He knew how Hux’s mind worked, knew his body inside and out, knew that this torment would wreak internal havoc that no outer beating could ever match.

Hux hung limply in his bonds and Kylo almost sobbed to see him. He wanted to send him a message, whisper in his ear that he’s here, he’s alive, he’s going to come for him, but the force suppressant in his veins blocked all ability. Straining from his bent position, arms chained up and behind him, his hair being pulled so he had to look up at the monitor he spoke.

“Tell them to stop this. He’ll never break and all this proves is that the resistance is just as cruel, maybe more so, as the Order.” His voice was strained, shaking. 

“Cruel? Which part, the beating?” Rey’s voice was cold behind him. “Or telling him that his toy is dead.” 

He was never as strong as Hux, more emotional and less stoic, but he held his ire. “I’m not his toy. I am his husband.”

The shocked inhale behind him made him smirk. So even if it wasn’t brand new news it was still surprising to hear the truth of it. 

“His. Husband.” He couldn’t turn his head, Rey’s fist in his hair and his straining shoulders preventing any motion but he recognized that voice.

“General Leia” He rolled his eyes up as she stepped in front of him, blocking the monitor. 

“Ben...”

“I’m not Ben!” His anger spilled out into the words and he was pleased to see her flinch back. 

“Ky- ...Kylo then. Is this true? Are you really ... together with that... that...” she trailed off as if unable to think of a word vile enough. 

“He’s mine as I am his, yes.” He spoke through clenched teeth and seething anger. “And despite what you may think you’re never going to break him. He’s stronger than any one I know.”

“Oh, I think he’s weaker than you think... Ben.” Rey had a streak of instability, of emotion, almost as wide as his own and he could hear the pleasure in her carefully soft voice. “Look.” The Leia stepped away so he could see.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please comment. Anything whether it’s “finish the damn thing” or “you suck hard core.”


	3. Hux

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> |Anything in lines| are what the person is thinking.

They had thrown him back in his cell. A stark white and yet somehow oppressive room with a cot, sink, and toilet. They’d left him everything he’d been wearing, nothing else, and he dove into the bundle, looking not for his shirt or coat but the heavy black fabric that smelled of static and sweat, blood and |him|. 

Kylo had wrapped him in the cloak, placed it around his set shoulders just before they separated each to his own responsibilities as the ship screamed and tremored around them. If they’d known what it meant to him would they have taken it? |Probably.| They still could. But for now he took it to his cot, lay on his side, and wrapped it around him inhaling deeply. |Kylo. Husband. Kriffing stars, don’t be dead| He passed out again, holding all he had left of his lover, of his life.


	4. Leia

“I say we execute him.” Rey leaned over the table towards Leia. “He’s a murderer and a madman and it shouldn’t matter what he is to anyone else, he deserves to die.” 

Leia sighed at the hot headed tempestuousness displayed, reminding her so much of her son as a child. “He has information we need Rey. We can’t just kill him.” 

“But using him, using them both, as levers against each other...” Finn spoke up, quietly and calmly. “Surely that’s cruelty. They obviously really do care for each other...”

“They deserve the torture.” Rey spat the words. “If bruises and broken bones don’t work then the emotions should.”

Leia’s shoulders hunched for a moment before she squared herself. “I know Ben is in there somewhere.” She didn’t know who scoffed. “He is. And if we can get him back we can-“

“Can what? Rehabilitate him? Rehabilitate both of them?” Rey laughed. “Bantha shit. They’re both too far gone. Let the madman think his -husband- is dead and let him give up. Let him tell us what he knows and kill him.”

“And do what then with Ben?” 

“You mean Kylo? He’s not Ben anymore Leia and you know it. If we don’t get the information we need from one then let Kylo break and tell us when Hux dies.”

Leia wondered when Rey became so ruthless, so bloodthirsty, so impetuous. “Rey. Please. Calm down. Focus. Let the light side guide you. You’re facing darkness with this brutality.” She didn’t know for sure but she thought she saw Rey pause slightly. “He’s still my son. And that ‘madman’ means the moons and stars to him. I don’t think... I’m sure... we won’t get anything good out of killing ether of them.”

Poe spoke up from his place beside Finn, sliding his arm along Finn’s waist. “I agree with Finn. Kylo may be the monster under the bed and Hux is a rabid cur but this is just as bad as anything I can think of. We’re supposed to be the good guys. We can’t just -“ He motioned to the dual monitors where Hux huddled in his cot and in another room Kylo pressed his fingers to the same image. “We can’t just do this to them.”

Rey sniffed as Finn leaned against Poe. “Maybe it’s because I can imagine how I’d feel to be on either side of that if the Order captured us and told me Finn was dead. I don’t know. But this is just wrong.”

Leia’s head hurt, her heart ached, and she wished she had any command of the force, any way to reach out to minds of their captives. To get the information without resorting to physical and emotional abuse. She didn’t want to send Rey, she really didn’t. But they had to do something different. This torture was taking its toll on her as well. She didn’t order the cessation of anything though. Didn’t stop the beating or taunting. Because some part of her blamed Hux, hated and despised him. Not for what he’d done under the Order but for what she feared he’d done to her son. 

The meeting moved on and she tried to put her son and his situation out of her mind if only for now.


	5. Hux

The chains were back. His neck was chafed and his wrists sore, back aching despite his years of perfecting his posture. The woman in front of him had hate in her eyes but he recognized her. 

“The scavenger girl. I’m not surprised. Did you kill him?”

Her eyes narrowed. “No. But I should have. Just as I should kill you.”

“But you won’t kill me. You want something or you wouldn’t be here yourself.” He made himself sneer at her, showing his contempt even as he still felt turmoil and loss inside. He went through the motions he knew he should just as he was trained. 

The brushing tickle at his mind wasn’t wholly unexpected- Kylo had told him of the girl’s ability, the strength in the force he had felt. |Not as strong as my - | he broke off the thought but had a feeling she’d seen it anyway. 

He put his shields up just as Kylo had taught him. He pictured smooth metal and the calmness he had felt back when he was training to be a sniper in the academy. Nothing existed but the calm breathing and metal of the wall he put up. The tickle became a push and he closed his eyes, breath even and faith in his shield. 

It could have been moments or hours, he didn’t know. The push became a shove then a battering ram. But Kylo’s teaching had been thorough and his metal wall stayed strong. When it broke off he let his wall go and opened his eyes. The girl was sweating and her hair had started to fall from her up do. 

“Kriffing hells. He taught you didn’t he. That son of a Loth cat and a whomp rat.” Her eyes were shining, almost glassy. 

“Careful scavenger. You wouldn’t want your General to hear you call her a loth cat or a whomp rat.” 

Rey crossed the few steps between them, nearly touching him. He had six inches over her but her glare was almost as good as his |she can be fierce|

“I don’t care what she hears. I told her to break and then kill you. Or just kill you. But for some reason she wants you alive. Maybe now that I’ve failed” the word was so venomous it almost stung “she’ll see it my way.”

“You’re more like Kylo than you know.” He wasn’t quite sure why he said it but smirked again at the sudden shocked expression on her face. 

“I am nothing - nothing - like that asshole.” She backed away, still glaring. 

“You have enough of the emotional ineptitude. Enough darkness. Enough hate. You could have been him were you the elder.” He knew enough of Kylo’s life, his past, his weaknesses to see them in her. With him gone... |he can’t be gone| he had no reason not to taunt and tease. 

Rey spat on the floor next to his feet and stormed out of the room. Hux stood, waiting for whatever would come next and thinking of how his knight would crash in and destroy them all for the treatment of his General. |but he’s gone and it’s just a fantasy| he couldn’t help but remind himself and he drooped against his wall.


	6. Kylo

“You did well with him. She never had a chance.”

He snorted. “She’s untrained and impulsive. Of course she never had a chance.” He sat on his cot, in a cell much like the one Hux was in. “But yes, I taught him to shield himself from the force.”

“Why, Ben?”

“Kylo.”

“Kylo. Why did you teach him?”

“Why do you care?”

She didn’t answer. He watched her for a minute before speaking again.  
“I taught him so he could keep me out if he wanted to. When we were... together ... I’d sometimes accidentally touch his mind. He... he didn’t like it.”

“So you taught him.”

“Yes, I taught him! What does it mean to you? You’re torturing him, physically and mentally so what do you care that I protected him in some way when I could?”

“You’d protect him even now.” It wasn’t a question. 

“With my body and my life. I swore it.”

“You really ... really do care for him even after everything he’s done for the order.”

“You forget I was with the order. I did just as much as he did. And I don’t care for him. I love him.” His eyes were hard and he dared her to dispute him. Her eyes were wet as she gazed back. 

“So you can still feel love.”

“Despite what your new pet force user may say I’m not heartless. I love him.”

“Then what would you do for his release?”

Kylo rocked back in his seat and glared. “I can have him back?”

“No. But you can have his life.”

“How?”


	7. Hux

Hux spent his days alternately not answering his interrogator’s questions, pacing, and laying in his cot. Kylo’s scent had faded from the black wool, taken over by his own scents of blood, |despair|, and sweat. But he imagined he could still smell it. Still feel muscled arms and long legs entangled with his own limbs and that expressive, beautiful mouth over his. In his dreams he called for his knight and he’d come, soothing and healing Hux’s weakening spirit. He would never tell them what they wanted. But he would let himself die under their ministrations. He had no reason for defiance, no delusions that his military bearing had any use. 

The guards differed. The bruises and broken skin didn’t. The taunts varied in their breadth and scope but always it came down to one thing. “Your Kylo Ren is dead.” The questions in between never changed either. He used to make up information, taunting them and sending their resources on mad chases. He stopped responding in any way. He never moved. Never flinched. Never made a sound. He just waited. For them to kill him or for his body to just give up under the strains. 

He stopped eating. Stopped pacing. Stopped thinking about anything but what he might find after death. Who he might find.


	8. Kylo

The monitor never stopped. He watched in anguish as the days passed and his lover gave up more and more. Kylo pressed his fingers to the screen and slept with his head against the wall next to it often.   
The drugs kept the force away from him and as empty as that made him feel at first it was nothing to watching this. 

“You can stop this. You can save him you know.”

He turned from Hux’s image and wiped his eyes as he looked at her - his mother - the General of the Resistance and representative of all he’d fought against 

“Hux wouldn’t want it.” |he always valued my strength... but he valued his life too...|

“Even on the verge of death he won’t talk. On the verge of his death you won’t talk?” 

Kylo blinked back tears. “I can’t.”

“You mean you won’t.” 

He sighed and pressed his palm to the screen, turning his back on her and watching carefully to see that Hux still breathed. 

Hux’s chest rose under the black cloak |my cloak| and Kylo breathed a sigh of relief in response before turning away again. 

“I mean I can’t. I never had the information you want.”

She sat in stunned silence, staring at him. “So when... when I offered you the exchange ... the information for his life it was...” 

“Almost as cruel as what you’re doing to him. Knowing I could save him for a brief moment before the other shoe dropped and I realized that I was going to watch him die no matter what...” He couldn’t help it, barely managing to bury his face in an arm before he choked out a sob. |He’s going to die. Soon. And I can’t save him.|

A hand on his shoulder made him look up. “I’m so sorry... so, so sorry.”

He wanted to spit at her. To curse and throw vitriol at her and tell her she never cared, not when he was a child and certainly not now when his heart was dying in his chest. But he couldn’t. He flinched away and cuddled as best he could to the wall again. 

He never heard her leave.


	9. Hux

“Get up.”

The voice wasn’t harsh but it was urgent. He didn’t obey. He was too weak. Too tired. 

“Get up.” The comfort of his cloak was ripped away from him and he finally rose if only to clutch at it and try to curl himself back into it. 

“Get up, for kark’s sake!” He opened his bruised and sunken eyes.   
Leia stood in front of him, holding a blaster. But it wasn’t pointed at him.

“Now! Move!” Legs unsteady he rose from the cot. She tossed the cloak back at him. “Put it on. Now.”

Hux did, the material hanging off his bones. She moved forward into the hall and he followed, barefoot, bewildered, and resigned. If Leia had come it was finally his end. He followed at her back until they reached a door and he squared himself as much as he could. He was ready. He would not be weak at his execution.


	10. Kylo

The monitor was off. It hadn’t been off for what could have been months. But it was off now. 

It could mean only one thing. 

Kylo lost it. He roared in pain and rage and failure. Hux was dead. He had to have died while Kylo slept. Hux was dead and he couldn’t have saved him if he tried. The cot became a mangled mess, anything he could get his hands on was shredded, the sink and toilet were ripped from the wall and floor. He was a whirlwind of anger and when there was nothing left to destroy he sat, panting, back to the wall and his head nodding back and forth, skull making a dull thud, as he tried to beat the new information in to his head. |My General, my Hux is gone.|

He was still, blood running slowly down his neck from where he split his skin on the wall when she entered. 

“I’m sorry. He died in his sleep.” There was pity in her quiet voice but he wouldn’t look at her. She had no right to pity him but he had no anger left. His mind was an aching landscape of memory, of how they’d first come together after hating each other for so long. Of how they’d discovered slowly how they fit so well together, how they complimented each other’s strengths and backed up weaknesses. The first night he’d been in Hux’s bed and seen him completely uninhibited and out of control |How glorious and beautiful and mine|

He was crying he knew, but he didn’t care. Let her see. 

“Kylo...” He didn’t flinch under the hand that touched his arm. He let her tilt his head up to face her. Let her see the devastation on his face. She had never called him by his chosen name without correction until now, after she’d taken everything from him and he grimaced. 

“We’re going to work with you. We’re going to see if we can bring you back. Eventually if we can trust you we’ll stop giving you the suppressants. But you have to cooperate. You have to do what we ask and you have to prove yourself. You have to let him go and live again on the side of the good and the light.” 

Her words just flitted through his mind. As if he could ever be what she wanted. What they wanted. As if he could ever forget Hux. He didn’t want to forget. He made a small noise as her hand fell away from his chin and she silently left the cell.


	11. Hux

It was not an execution squad or even a sterile table with waiting needles that would push deadly fluids though him, paralyzing and him and stopping his heart. It was a ship. A ratty old thing that looked like a hybrid of trash heap and x-wing with a little land speeder thrown in for good measure. His confusion deepened as he wondered what waited inside to rip his life from him. 

“Sit down, belt in, and stay shut up.”

Hux’s hands were awkward and shaky but he did what she said and within minutes they were off planet. “So you’re going to drop me in deep space.” His voice was a croak. She tilted her head towards him from the pilots seat.

“No.”

“Why not? You have no reason to keep me alive and I have no reason to live |without my knight|.”

“Because. As evil and vile and monstrous as you are I owe you.” 

Hux laughed bitterly. “For what? What could I possibly have done that the great Leia Organa feels a debt to me?”

“You didn’t deserve that. The abuse. The torture. Once we realized you’d never give up the Order we should have just killed you and been done with you. But we - I - didn’t. I let them beat you and Taunt you. When you stopped responding, stopped eating, I should have killed you just to put you out of your misery. But I didn’t. None of what we did to you is what the Resistance stands for but I let my anger and sorrow lead me and ... well. What’s done is done.”

His head swam and he gripped the seat harness tightly. “What’s done is done.” The words dripped with his disdain and anger. “What comes next I wonder. It’s not like I have much time left, you may as well give in to your anger |like Kylo used to do before there was an “us”| and put and end to it.”

“No, you’ll live. You’ll live and, knowing what I know about you, you’ll do well for yourself. But you won’t be a threat. Not to us. Not to anyone.”

She focused her attention on piloting again and said nothing else for long hours. He fell asleep at some point and dreamt of Kylo, of everything going so differently, of not being captured and having the rest of their lives to rule together. 

The landing jolt woke him and the whine of the engine powering down pierced his head. When he looked up Leia was in front of him. 

“Here.” She thrust a pack at him and exited the ship. He wasn’t sure he could sling it over his back, much less walk with it, but he released the harness and stood. His head ached, his muscles were tense and sore, still, he did his best and lurched out onto the planet surface after her. 

“Where are we?”

She didn’t answer, opting to keep walking ahead of him. They were in a clearing, surrounded by forest. It was a grey day and Hux shivered under Kylo’s cloak. They walked. He was ready to fall off his own feet and just lie in the dirt when she halted and passed him a cantine. He drank, if only because he wanted last long enough to see where she was taking him. She immediately set out again as soon as he had passed it back and he hitched the pack higher on his back, sighing. 

The trees thinned as they followed a path Leia seemed to know. His mind wandered as his feet plodded on causing him to run into her back when she stopped again. He stumbled away as she whirled.   
“Sorry.” It was a mumble. He couldn’t remember when he’d last apologized to anyone but Ren. But it fell out of his mouth without a thought. 

“We’re here.”

Here was a wooden home built at the edge of the forest. It was large |for something so backwater| and there was a person standing in the door waiting. No, not a person. |a karking droid.|

“In.” She pointed and Hux trudged up the three stairs and pushed past the droid. It was wearing clothes but it was definitely a humanoid droid. The droid spoke as he passed. 

“General Organa! Nice to see you. Who have you brought with you?”

“What’s your first name?” She called after him. She didn’t want anyone, even a droid, to know just exactly she was dropping on this planet and his last name was just too famous. 

“Armitage.” He sighed. No one had called him that since he was a child. He was always called by his title and his last name. 

“This is Armitage. Can you see to it that he is taken care of for a while?” Leia asked the droid from the steps. 

“Of course ma’am.”

“He needs medical to see to him.”

“I do not!” Hux hissed. He was fine. His ribs hurt when he breathed deeply, his nose had healed off kilter from being broken, and his hearing was somewhat lessened from all the blows to the head but he would be damned if she knew all that. 

“Fine. Just make sure he is well before he leaves this house. He’ll never make it to the town if he tries now.”

Her not so subtle threat made him pause momentarily but he refused to look at her. 

“Good bye Armitage.”

He didn’t watch her stride off and he was only dimly aware when her ship flew low overhead. 

The droid entered behind him. “C3L2. You can call me L for short. Follow me.”

He was lead to a small room much like a ships refresher but less metal and more wood and tile. There was a shower stall |a real water shower not a sonic| and the droid nudged him towards it. 

“Clean up.” 

Hux dropped his pack and stared. He didn’t know why he was being offered this. He deserved to be dead. He wanted to be dead. And here he was in front of a luxury he hadn’t had in decades being told to get in. 

He slid from the black wool and almost fell over when he yanked it back from the reaching L. “No! Don’t touch this!” L dropped its hand.

“Apologies. I was going to take your things to be cleaned.”

The scent of Ren was long gone and the material was smeared with dried blood in places but Hux didn’t want to give it up. 

“The rest. But not this.” He folded it and put it gently on the counter. He stepped out of the rest of his clothes, worn and rank and filthy. The droid scooped them up, ignoring his nudity, and he stepped into his first shower in as long as he could remember.

After he got out and dried himself on a larger than standard issue towel he discovered new clothes sitting on the closed lid of the commode. They were not army issue, not grey or black but soft brown pants that would have fit him before he lost his |will to live| weight. Now they needed to be held up with their drawstring. The green long sleeved shirt was loose and the shoulder slipped off, exposing a collar bone but anything was better than the clothes he’d been wearing. 

L knocked and he opened the door. “This way now.” He followed yet again. The droid took him to another room and pointed to the corner. “Sleep. There will be food when you get up.” 

Here was another luxury. A bed. Not a cot. A bed. It was larger than the bed in his quarters had been and as he slipped into it he imagined his knight climbing in the other side, his body radiating heat as they slid together in the middle. Hux sighed. It would do no good to fantasize. He was stranded, possibly a million light years from anything he knew, and his husband was dead. He curled up tightly and slept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are my favorite thing!


	12. Leia

It took five years before they took the force suppressants away. Five years of his near silence and tired servitude. He did what they asked, never complaining, never letting his anger rise to the surface. He rarely spoke, flying missions and fixing tech without more than necessary. 

Leia knew now. She’d never get her son back. Maybe she’d lost him all those years ago when Snoke slithered into his mind and warped him. Maybe she lost him when she told him Hux died. But Ben was gone. Now Kylo was gone. All there remained was a shell of a man, beaten and obedient. She sighed as she signed the order that would cease the drugs.


	13. Kylo

He was deep in a landspeeder engine when the world shifted. His mind roiled as he felt it |the Force| coming back. He hadn’t noticed that it had been days since his last drug. He hadn’t thought he’d ever get it back. It almost overwhelmed him and he withdrew from the speeder to crash into the couch near by. |They gave it back. Too little, too late, but they gave it back. And all I want is my Hux|. He curled on his side and wished he could go back.


	14. Rey

Rey knew that Kylo had been free from the drugs for a week now. She knew he had to have felt the Force return. But he hadn’t changed. If anything he looked more dejected, more stressed. 

She no longer burned with the desire to kill him, to see him suffer. She’d outgrown it, learned beyond her emotional strife, and she thrived in the light. She wasn’t entirely sure that Kylo had been at all successful in his journey.

“Kylo. The general” she saw his eyes flinch as she said it - “Leia wants you.”

He nodded, dropping the mech he held, and walked past her. She opened herself ever so slightly as he passed, wanting to get a feel for his mind. She used to peek in once in a while, usually at Leia’s bequest, but she refused after a few times. The raw pain that she felt from him was too much and drained her for hours afterwards. Now she knew he’d feel the brush of her mind against his. Knew he could toss her out mentally and physically. But she did it anyway, almost hoping for a reaction. 

The pain remained and she heard a broken and tiny thought underneath that said “let me die” over and over again. She flinched back but this time she felt his whisper over her mind as she withdrew.

~Like what you see? Like what I’ve become?~

She shook her head in mute horror. 

~Then get out and leave me alone.~

She stopped in her tracks and watched him walk away. Her heart hurt for him, knowing it was as much her fault as anyone’s that he felt like this, knowing there was nothing and no one to fix him.


	15. Kylo

The mission was pointless. There would be no information about anything on this planet but she had ordered it anyway. Had told him to pack and prepare, to bring the new lightsaber he had created by her command. He built it dutifully, without a cracked kyber crystal and with a green blade |green like his eyes| but he’d never use it. 

She’d wanted him to build it after he got the Force back, to coax him back to the Jedi, to the light. But it was pointless. He wasn’t a Jedi. He wasn’t a Knight of Ren. He wasn’t anything anymore. 

The X-wing landed in the clearing. The trees were still and silent in the twilight as he exited. There was no path that he could see. 

“You’ll know. When it’s time, you’ll know. Just let the force guide you.” She’d smiled sadly as she said it. He’d let her embrace him and he’d set off on her quest. 

With a sigh he contemplated just crashing through in any direction but he knew that it was a stupid idea. He closed his eyes and let the Force flow through him as he hadn’t done in years. ~Where are you? Where am I going?~ he asked the world at large. He felt nothing at first. No path appeared when he opened his eyes. |kriff, this is pointless|

He couldn’t give up and return yet though. If for no other reason than he didn’t want to add yet another failure to his life. He knew there was nothing of interest to the Resistance here but he’d try to find the path anyway. 

Again he closed his eyes. ~Where are you?~ The trees rustled in a new breeze and he felt a faint touch at the edge of his awareness. A touch he recognized. A touch he had lost forever a long time ago. This time when he opened his eyes he knew where to go. He threw himself into the growing darkness.


	16. Hux

Hux had built a life over the last years. He remained in the house that Leis had left him in, kept L with him, stayed to himself as much as possible. But he was healthy and alive, comfortable enough to make the trek into the town as needed and anonymous enough that he wasn’t unwelcome. 

He still kept Kylo’s cloak, hung up in the closet, and once in a while, when he’d had a dream, bad or good, about Kylo he’d bring it out and curl under it. |Even after years I can’t let him go|.

Today had been rough. He’d woken from a nightmare and couldn’t get back to sleep. Even the warmth of wool didn’t help. He got up to find it raining, which made his ribs ache and made him think of when he was a prisoner of the resistance. Nothing seemed to go well and he cursed loudly and often as the day died into night. 

He finally gave up, knowing it could only get worse the longer he fought. He stood and stretched, yawning. He thought about food but wasn’t really hungry. He’d go to bed |with the cloak| and sleep. 

He’d just gotten settled, just started dozing into a memory of warm brown eyes and a soft mouth, when a crash sent him diving out of bed. He grabbed the blaster he’d managed to trade for some years ago and aimed it at the doorway. 

The door slammed inwards and he pulled the trigger at the tall form that barged in. The red bolt stopped mid air and angled off into the wall. Hux inhaled sharply, ready to fire again when the blaster yanked from his grip and flew across the room. 

“You’d really kill me?” Hux froze at the voice, the familiar humor.

|I’m dead. I’m dreaming. I’m dead. It can’t be. For all the stars and moons in the galaxies it can’t be|.

He was lifted off the floor into strong arms and held there. He knew those arms. Knew the eyes that looked ever so slightly down into his. Knew the crooked grin. 

“Kylo?” There was a nod. “You’re dead.”

“So were you. They told me you died in your sleep after you ...” his voice hitched and he faltered. 

“Gave up? I did. You were gone. They told me over and over. Your mother told me you were dead. I believed them.” Hux’s eyes were glassy, tears clinging in the corners. 

Kylo put him down but kept his arms wrapped around his shoulders. Hux raised his arms and returned the embrace. 

“Stars Kylo. I nearly died without you.” It was a whisper. 

“My poor strong general. I almost died without you too.” 

“How did you find me?” 

“My mother. She sent me here. I didn’t know why at first. But...”

“She sent you to me. All these years and she sent you back to me.” He laid his cheek against Ren’s chest and inhaled deeply, the tears finally escaping. Static and sweat and Kylo’s skin. “I missed you. Every day I missed you.”

Kylo nudged Hux’s head up to look at him. “I missed you too.” He bent and kissed him. Years of hurt and longing seemed to catch up to them both and they collapsed back into Hux’s bed. 

With a short laugh Kylo tugged the black fabric from under them. “You kept this.” 

“It’s all I had. From you. From us. I kept it.” 

Kylo kissed him again then whispered against his lips, “You have me. We have us. We’re together and I’m never going to let that change again.” 

Hux smiled and whispered “Good. Now come here.” Their lips pressed together hard and desperate both grinning and pawing at the other trying to find completion in each other’s touch.


	17. Rey, Epilogue

Rey wasn’t sure what she expected when she reached the log house. Hux and Kylo ruling the planet together perhaps. Or one or the other alone again. It had been several years, who knows what havoc they could have made together or for each other. She didn’t expect the house to be empty, the droid gone and the roof falling in. 

Leia had told her, eventually, what she had done. How she’d gotten Hux out, pretending to everyone including Kylo that he’d died. How she’d seen the years go by without her son’s love fading and how she had realized he’d never again be her Ben or even the Kylo Ren she knew. How she’d sent him out on a pointless mission that happened to land him in the same place she had left Hux. 

“They’ve suffered enough. They’re together again and what they do with that is their own choice.” 

Rey had nodded and agreed. She’d seen Finn and Poe. Found her Rose, and knew that if it had been the other way and they’d told her Rose was dead she’d have died too. 

She entered the house carefully. She searched around, not knowing what she was looking for until she saw it. A metal box sitting on the dusty bed. 

She took it back to her ship, knowing that there was nothing else in that house. On this planet. She opened it. The writing was sharp yet fluid and she knew it had to be Kylo’s hand that wrote it.

She read it twice before folding it back up and tucking it back in its box. 

Climbing into the pilots seat she started the engines and the Falcon started to rise. She smiled. |They’re together still. Together and happy| She set her course back to base, to where Leia waited for news and Rose waited for her kiss.


End file.
